Marco Rubio: 'I needed water'

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) joked Wednesday about his abrupt, awkward water break during his delivery of the GOP rebuttal to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday — by doing the same thing again, and then again.

On Tuesday night during his speech, a dry-mouthed Rubio paused mid-speech to reach off-camera for a water bottle and then took a swig while still looking in the camera.

After “GMA,” Rubio was on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends,” where he again took a swig from an off-camera water bottle.

“My mouth got dry, and I had to get some water,” Rubio explained. “You know, when you give a speech on a podium and the water is right there — but when you don’t, you start looking around thinking, ‘Where am I going to get the water?’”

He continued: “I figured I was better off just taking that water and taking the hit for it then being unable to pronounce my words. It’d been a long day at work, we’d already done an 18-minute recording in Spanish — and you know, my mouth got dry, what can I say? But I was happy overall with what we were able to deliver.”

Following the speech, Rubio tweeted a picture of the bottle seen round the world: